Sokoball: A Game Of Forethought And Strategic Design

by: Jim Radcliffe

Publication date: 1993

Topics: dos, sokoban, Block-pushing, fatal distractions, Chapter 7

From the sokoball.doc file: What is Sokoball? Sokoball is my version of the Sokoban puzzles you may have seen in the past. Sokoban is Japanese for "warehouse man". In Sokoban puzzles you must generally push a number of boxes around the screen to a designated position. The key word here is push. In Sokoban puzzles that is the only way you can move any box. You must push it to its' destination. Sokoball abides by this rule as well (in most cases). What's the object of the Sokoball game? Clear all of the boxes from the board by pushing them down the exit shafts. You are not under the gun of a clock or any number of moves. You simply must clear all boxes from the board to "beat" or solve the puzzle. I like the word beat. What are the differences between Sokoball and Sokoban? All of the Sokoban games that I have seen have offered a number of puzzles or levels that you had complete in succession. In addition, they all required you to simply get the boxes to a designated area with the only hazards being moving your boxes into a corner or creating a pile of boxes which you could not move. In Sokoban you can only push one box at a time and you can only push the boxes across a totally empty floor tile. Sokoball follows this tradition. Now the neat stuff.... I wanted to add some additional hazards and obstacles to overcome in Sokoball, such as one way streets, pop-up barriers and floor plans that change when you cross certain floor tiles. I didn't want to force anyone to complete a series of puzzles in a specific order. In Sokoball you can play any puzzle you wish at any time. If a certain Sokoball puzzle has you stumped, give it a rest and come back to it later. In the meantime, how about solving that puzzle your co-worker created and bet you 10 bucks you couldn't solve. That's right, with Sokoball you can create your own puzzles...it comes with an Editor so you can edit and create your own diabolical puzzles for those know-it-alls you work with to solve. This is from Chapter 7 of the Fatal Distractions CD.